Humans love to do stupid things to reach far-off places – but even the wildest frontiers on Earth have at least the possibility of a return home
Like hoverboards, teleportation or smart glasses that don’t make you look like an absolute twat, space colonisation is a technological advent long-promised but as yet undelivered. Before Neil Armstrong even set foot on the moon, the US military was envisaging a long-term lunar outpost. The cost proved prohibitive and the Apollo missions came and went, amid ever-decreasing television ratings. By the mid-1970s, the general consensus was that we’d been there, done that and bought the commemorative ashtray.
Besides, why shoot for the moon when you can travel an extra 228m kilometres and colonise Mars instead?